MUNCIE – Mark Sandy's career has been driven by a simple philosophy and the opportunities that came to him.

Ball State University's new athletic director isn't the sort who goes chasing after interviews and new jobs. In a profession by its nature competitive and brimming with extremely ambitious people, he's only had three jobs in the past 18 years.

The way he's moved to different places and risen to the post he now occupies reflects his quiet, reserved demeanor and a bit of wisdom passed on by someone.

"One of my college coaches told me a long time ago, during your career, there will be few times when someone comes and says, this is a great job for you," Sandy said. "Would you like this job? Would you come work for me?

"That was one of those moments."

That's how he's taken many of the steps in his career, from coaching to college administration and into the world of athletics. Now he's at the helm of a BSU department that prospered in just over two years with Bill Scholl.

Talk to some of the athletic directors he's worked with, and the effuse praise bubble forth. His interactions with them reflect stops and turning points in a long journey from a small-town upbringing to Muncie and Cardinal red.

'Glue of the team'

Mark Sandy grew up in a world now mostly lost in the shifts of American history.

He was raised in a coal camp near Mullens, W. Va., a cluster of 50-60 homes in Appalachian mining country. His father ran the company store, the sort that sold everything from foods to firearms, right next to the railroad tracks.

Don Nuckols, a long-time coach at Mullens High School, knew Sandy during his upbringing. The coach raves about how good and humble his family was and saw the kind of restrained nature Sandy still has, at least when he wasn't playing sports.

"He was kind of a quiet kid off the court," Nuckols said. "But when he got on the court and threw the ball up, he was a scrapper and hustled. A lot of fire under him."

Sandy referred to himself as a good but not great high school player, someone who was fiery enough to stir the pot and get in the middle of things. His coach called him as good a point guard as had ever come through Mullens, high praise from a man who led five teams to state titles.

But for as good as he was, Sandy didn't even ascend to a starting spot until his senior season. He found himself behind one of Mullen's highest-profile alums: Mike D'Antoni, future NBA coach in Phoenix, New York and Los Angeles.

When D'Antoni (whose father was school principal and whose brother coaches Marshall) graduated in 1969, he left with most of his team. It gave Nuckols a little something to needle a young Mark Sandy with in 11th-grade history class.

"I used to kid him sometimes. I used to say, 'You know, we're losing all our starters this year. It looks like we're going to be down next year,'" Nuckols said. "Mark would always smile and say, 'You'll see, you'll see. We're going to be better.' "

The youthful bravado proved prophetic.

Sandy shared the court with future University of West Virginia star and NBA player Jerome Anderson (the AD is quick to emphasize the talent in classes before and after him), and the team came together for the postseason.

Nuckols recounted his point guard leading a rally from nine points down in the final couple of minutes of a regional game, then felling a high-scoring squad ranked No. 1 in the state.

They finished off the title by knocking off a Charles Town team with a towering frontcourt that included two future college players.

Sandy had dreams of playing for Marshall, but the bigger schools were not banging down the door of a 5-foot-9, 140-pound point guard. He ended up at Ferrum College, a two-year school where he played on a national title runner-up and lost to Vincennes from Indiana.

He got some interest from smaller Division I schools such as Detroit and William and Mary, but when those didn't work out, he ended up at Division II Concord College. He was close enough to home his father, Bud, could come and watch him play baseball and basketball as he was eventually named a captain in both sports.

As his playing days waned, he turned his attention toward his next step, coaching.

"I was always enamored by the Atlantic Coast Conference and Dean Smith and the Tar Heels, and after that, Wake Forest," Mark Sandy said.

Tragedy and new roads

Sandy's first venture into the professional world came in one of those moments when someone directed him to a job. He'd planned to return to Mullens as an assistant and teacher, but a school board member pointed him to an opening at the smaller school up the road where he was the baseball and basketball coach.

After two years on the high school level, Sandy got his first college coaching opportunity, which ended in the most difficult moment of his life.

He joined the Evansville staff in 1977 with Bobby Watson, who was replacing legendary coach Arad McCutchan. He took to the job and the community, and established a special bond with his players.

"There was married apartments and we took one of those and we had all the basketball players and some football players," Sandy said. "My wife and I, we were the dorm parents in the apartment there."

It was a simple twist of fate. One member of the staff was going to watch a high school player. It shifted Sandy to advanced scouting, meaning he went to watch Southern Illinois when the team boarded a flight in the evening of Dec. 13.

The plane had hardly taken off before the crash, which killed everyone on board.

More than 35 years later, Sandy prefers not to talk about it. He admits it was the hardest emotional moment of his life, and left him with the sort of questions that follow a tragedy: why wasn't he there with his team? Why had he survived?

But being the reserved personality he is, he wants to make sure one thing is clear.

"I never want to paint that it was as tough for me as for their families, not even close," Sandy said.

Yet this traumatic moment didn't deter his coaching aspirations. He says it just never occurred to try something else, so he went back into the job.

After meeting former Ferrum coach Carl Tacy at the Final Four, Sandy reached the ACC by joining Tacy's Wake Forest staff. A year later, Sandy landed on the staff at Virginia Military Institute, where he worked alongside Jim Miller, a man who later came to impact Sandy's professional fortunes.

Miller recalled a young Sandy working closely with players. He had a little of that fire to motivate them but was always willing to stay after practice to get a little extra skill work in.

Together they worked through the challenges of coaching in a rigid military environment, something Miller admits was harder than he would have acknowledged at the time.

But coaches are hired to be fired, and as the fortunes of head coach Charlie Schmaus' programs turned, he was let go, leaving Sandy adrift.

He unsuccessfully tried to land another coaching job, missing out on a few assistant spots and a junior college head job. Then came one of those pivot points, one of those opportunities where someone came to him with a job.

"It just didn't click that spring," Sandy said. "I had an opportunity to stay on at the Virginia Military Institute in student affairs and working in the admissions office. I said, sure, I'll do that."

Back to his element

At points in his time in college administration, Sandy felt content with the path he'd set out on. Starting with his time working for Col. William J. Buchanan, the longtime director of admissions at VMI, Sandy enjoyed the problem solving and organizational aspects.

He thought he might end up a vice president of student affairs, started on a doctorate and sports was the farthest thing from his mind.

"When I was in the middle of my career, I never thought much about that," Sandy said.

But that's where Eric Hyman crossed into the picture. He'd been athletic director at VMI, and after he moved on to Miami and the Mid-American Conference, he wanted to bring Sandy over.

He knew Sandy's background included working with scholarships and fundraising, and thought he could head up the athletic department's fundraising arm even without much background on the athletic side.

"The things I look for is work ethic, intelligence and integrity, that's the cornerstone," said Hyman, who has since had stops at TCU, South Carolina and now Texas A&M. "He had those values. I don't try to teach values, I hire values.

"Experience is important, but if you're a smart person, you might be able to catch up."

So after working at VMI and Francis Marion in Florence, S.C., Sandy and his family ventured to the Midwest and he took to the job. He was settled enough that it took some recruiting to pull him back to Virginia.

In 2000, Jim Miller, the man he coached alongside back at VMI was the AD at Richmond. He wanted to bring Sandy onboard, and now he was the one coming, saying he had a job, would Sandy come work for him?

Sandy turned him down three times. Yet Miller's interest endured for an array of reasons he laid out.

"He is somebody you could always trust," Miller said. "He was very giving. He put other people first. He was just a very good person, not somebody with an agenda."

The fourth offer worked and Sandy embarked on five years in several associate athletic director roles. There, he spearheaded a $20 million campaign for a new football stadium. He put down roots deep enough his son Kraig is still a police officer in the area (his daughter Madison is a doctoral student).

He was happy there, but then the call came from out of the blue. Would he consider an athletic director spot at Eastern Kentucky? This is where that undercurrent of ambition came in. Perhaps this was the right time and fit.

Miller said when Sandy took the job, he never turned to find a "mentor" about sitting in the big chair. He talked with others, took in new ideas, but in many ways cut his own path.

"He was ready to go and do his own thing there," Miller said.

He spent 10 years doing his own thing. The Colonels found balanced success across a range of sports (32 conference titles). They improved every athletic facility on campus. They posted strong APR performances.

He admits he'd looked at only two or four other jobs total, and after nearly a decade, what pushes a man to move on?

There's always that lingering question, could he do it somewhere else? Could he prove it at a higher level?

There's a competitiveness in the business, from the fiery high school point guard Sandy once was to the reserved man you'll meet today. Yet again, someone dropped his name and reached out, would you be interested?

The word he'll use several times is assessing. What is the state of the facilities? What common themes emerge talking to different departments? What are the concerns already on the ground?

"He's had an inquiring mind," said Hyman, who will reunite with Sandy in the fall when the Cardinals football team will be the opening opponent at A&M's newly-renovated, nearly-half billion dollar stadium.

Coming in during the year (he started at the beginning of February), Sandy began in the middle of things but also said he can start planning for next year.

He made the choice to live very close to campus, saying and his wife, Kathryn or "Kitty", want to stay close to the community (Hyman raved about her involvement on that front).

Mark Sandy comes to the job in a peculiar sort of time in the fundraising cycle. Instead of his coming in and launching a fundraising push, the $20 million campaign that Bill Scholl got underway finished up between Sandy's hiring and first day.

So Sandy's first steps focus on getting all those projects, set to impact a range of teams, under way. Still, the facilities front remained a crucial linchpin in his outlook.

"You can't get a great coach or keep a great coach or their staff for very long if you don't have great facilities," Sandy said. "If you don't have good facilities and a good coach, over time, you can't recruit the best student athletes."

Sitting in his office he runs through the goals, both soft and hard, for the department. He wants to get Ball State's facilities closer to the forefront of the MAC, and also wants to reach a point where any perception the school is chasing the rest of the conference dissipates.

He lays out the desire to create something between aura and mystique, that playing Ball State is a big deal in this league. Somewhere in there is a remnant of his coaching days, a respect for what those hard-to-quantify factors can bring.

But his attitude toward his coaches reflects that reserved personality, the quiet kid Nuckols met all those years ago.

There are plenty of ADs who just seem to hit you with a wave of energy (with Hyman, the outgoing enthusiasm radiates through the phone). Sandy sees himself as a behind-the-scenes worker.

He'll work with the school president who hired him, Paul Ferguson. He'll be planning, involved with the community, in the middle of the background. In his world, the coaches take center stage; he defers to them because he prefers not to detract from them.

A simple philosophy if there ever was one.

"My demeanor is that I'm the foundation behind the scenes, not the face of athletics," Sandy said. "That's my choice, that's my feeling.

"The athletic contest part, I see that as a coach's realm. I want them to be the rockstars, not me."